Inside Labour | Labour is lost as May Day approaches, writes Terry Bell
And I will not be alone: there appears to be a growing consensus that tomorrow may mark the nadir to which the local labour movement has fallen.
In Chicago in May 1886, it was that fight by working people for a better life for all that gave us May Day as a celebration of the courage and determination of workers who dared to dream of a truly democratic world. It lasted for more than five years, causing wage cuts and a surge in unemployment: conditions that have a distinct echo today.When workers organised, they often faced the bayonets and bullets of state and private militias along with a biased media, the courts and the gallows. Four activists, two of them journalists, one a printer and the other a carpenter, who were part of the call for an eight-hour working day to be introduced on May 1, 1886, were hanged.
There are many echoes from quite recent local history of that legal lynching in the US and of the events leading up to it. In our part of the world village, it was a largely democratic, worker-led and militant trade union movement that fought against incredible odds to help bring about the transition that we celebrated this week as Freedom Day.
This because dissenting views are often simply not tolerated, and democratic decisions, where made, are ignored. It is obvious that much internal union democracy has broken down. But there are currently two major cases scheduled, the first being an action to have the proceedings of the chaotic and expensive 11th Numsa national congress and all its resolutions and elections declared null and void.
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